For more than 20 years, Bernard Malamud has been talking like a novelist
engagé. Much of his fiction has explored Jewish "ethicality," which he
defines as "how Jews felt they had to live in order to go on living."
In 1958, the year he published his National Book Award-winning stories,
The Magic Barrel, he said, quoting Albert Camus: "The purpose of the
writer is to keep civilization from destroying itself." He has deplored
the self-devaluation of modern man that springs from his having...